An estimated over 3 million people in Pakistan are affected by serious fungal infections, reveals a new first-ever study that estimates the burden of serious fungal diseases in 14 of the worst-affected countries across the globe, including Pakistan.
The results, which have just been published, provide a stark reminder of the disconnect between the lack of public health systems and the wealth of scientific research information now available. This adds to the global fungal burden data already available from 29 countries.
The authors of the paper, which is titled, ‘Serious fungal infections in Pakistan,’ and is part of the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases theme issue on fungal infections, looked at Algeria, Bangladesh, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, South Korea, Thailand and Uzbekistan.
According to the authors, including Dr. Kauser Jabeen, Dr. Afia Zafar and Dr. Joveria Farooqi from Aga Khan University’s department of pathology and laboratory medicine, the diseases of real concern in Pakistan are fungal keratitis or inflammation of the eye’s cornea, and candidaemia or blood stream yeast infection. Both the problems affect approximately 120,000 people in the country. Aspergillosis or mold infection of the lungs is another serious problem.
An estimated 883 million people in the 14 countries that form part of the study in Asia, the Americas, Europe and North Africa, are affected by serious fungal diseases. The estimates show that between 1.8 to 3 per cent of the population of each country is affected by some of the most serious types of fungal disease, which can cause chronic illness and even death in the most extreme cases.
In Pakistan, authors estimated the burden based on available data. The true burden is unknown, as no nationwide population-based survey has ever been carried out. Estimates were made for the whole population, and then for specific at-risk populations.
While fungal infections can affect anyone, they are a serious threat to people with weakened immune systems, such as those with TB, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, asthma, cancer, organ transplant or HIV/AIDS.
Fungal diseases are a public health problem. In resource-poor countries, fungal diseases and disease surveillance have generally been neglected by public health systems, who are also faced with the additional burden of having inadequate facilities to diagnosis and treat these infections.
But the first step, research, has been taken. “Having started this programme of country by country estimates of the number of people affected by serious fungal diseases in 2012, we have now published 43 peer-reviewed papers and another 25 abstracts covering 5.6 billion people,” said Professor David Denning of the University of Manchester and Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (GAFFI). “We have applied similar methods for each country, and identified numerous key gaps in knowledge,” he concluded.
